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(6)The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past vs (11)Gunstar Heroes 2004
__TOC__ Results Wednesday, April 14th, 2004 Ulti's Analysis Another division, another display of Zelda dominance. This match featured the highest prediction percentage, the biggest blowout in terns of vote difference, and one of the single highest voting outputs in the entire contest. Gunstar Heroes may have been influential, but it doesn't come close to being well-known enough to do serious damage in this contest. Nothing more than fodder for LTTP, despite CJayC's claim that 'Any one of these games can win it all. It just depends on who comes out to vote.' It was no question who would win this match. Zelda is one of the best series in gaming, plain and simple. And this match made a ton of people, including yours truly, wonder just how strong Zelda was in this contest. When you factor in the underdog vote, joke votes, anti-votes, and all of that other jazz, holding any game under 10% is not easy to do. Yet through two matches, the Zelda series was 2-0 and looking like it would dominate the entire contest. Those of us who didn't think a single Zelda game would make the Final Four really started to wonder after this match. There were also a select group of Metroid fans (NeoElfboy, Xenobi) who maintained that this victory didn't mean all that much, and that any performance against Gunstar Heroes, one of the weakest games in the contest, should be taken with a grain of salt. We all know how that turned out, but more on it later. The other thing I found really stupid was LTTP's seeding. CJayC mentioned that 99% of the bracket was done purely based on seeding and that he only tweaked the bracket just a little. The more I think about it, the more I think that LTTP being a 6 seed in this contest, behind Super Metroid, FF6, Mario World, and Sonic 2 I might add, was manipulation by CJayC in order to have LTTP and Super Metroid, arguably the two best Nintendo-based SNES games out there, against each other in the second round. It's very difficult to think that the nomination philosophy of 'It will get in anyway, so I'm going to nominate an underdog' applies to LTTP moreso than any other game in the contest. It sure didn't seem to bother the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, or Halo all that much. The examples aren't many, but they are there. If you look at the bracket very closely, you can cite some instances where CJayC was trying to get the more interesting matches. Perfect Dark vs Goldeneye? Mario World vs Sonic 2? Super Metroid vs LTTP? Metroid Prime vs Wind Waker? Puh-leeze. I don't fault CJayC however, as I might have done the same thing. Anyway, this match was the third in our four part series of blowouts. Only one more to go before this topic starts getting interesting again. But damn, didn't it look like Zelda was unbeatable after this match? And if not this match, then what about your thoughts after the second round? Good grief, some of those matches were flat-out shocking. But more on those later. External Links * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category: 2004 Spring Contest Matches